Saturday, November 29, 2008

Legal Pad, the blog of CalLaw.com, debates the merits of Twitter for lawyers and provides a link to a list of over 300 "absolute-must-follow lawyer-twitterers." I first learned about Twitter at BlogHer 2007 in Chicago, and I created a Twitter account, but its utility for lawyers I confess remains beyond me. What would I have written yesterday? That I was researching whether the 30-day deadline to submit corrections to a deposition transcript is extended 5 days for service by mail (it is, according to Weil & Brown)? Fascinating stuff.

**Of Twitter, there has been some research by Bernardo A. Huberman, who once worked in the area of superionic conductors-->

In the past, Huberman worked in condensed matter physics, dealing with systems ranging from superionic conductors to two-dimensional superfluids, and has made contributions to the theory of critical phenomena in low-dimensional systems. He is one of the discoverers of chaos in a number of physical systems, and also established a number of universal properties of nonlinear dynamical systems. His research into the dynamics of complex structures led to his discovery of ultradiffusion in hierarchical systems.

**UPDATE. SecuringInnovation has the following entry related to Twitter-->

Innovation: Baby TwitterExpectant father Corey Menscher wanted to “create a device that would give me a chance to be aware of our baby’s movements”. He created a waistband for his wife which sends a Tweet everytime the baby kicks, naming the project “Kickbee”.

In passing, IPBiz heard on the radio that some folks in California are being buried with their cellphones and/or Blackberries. And people thought the Egyptians were weird!

Tonight, following Kevin O'Keefe on Twitter, we see him pointing to an interesting article in U.S. News and World Report about how companies use social media to be a part of the conversation.

The onslaught of blogs, discussion forums and user-generated media has changed the flow of information about people, products and brands forever. Anyone with a computer, a video camera or even a cell phone can post information, reviews and comments about you and your brand on dozens of highly visited online destinations.

It's no longer enough to create a website and assume that prospects will learn about your company solely from there. In today's online social media world, businesses of all shapes and sizes must actively participate in online reputation management.

Of course, the best way to manage your online reputation from a business standpoint is to put out great products, provide excellent customer service and honor all your commitments. That's certainly a great start, but you may still need to monitor and respond to what's being said about your organization.In the end, writes John Jantsch, the only way to control what people say about your company is to be part of the conversation. We might add, even when the conversation isn't about your company but about another company with a very similar name.

Nicholas Carr, author of The Big Switch, Rewiring the World, has calculated that maintaining a character (known as an avatar) in the Second Life virtual reality game, requires 1,752 kilowatt hours of electricity per year. That is almost as much used by the average Brazilian.

“It’s not an unreasonable comparison,” said Liam Newcombe, an expert on data centres at the British Computer Society. “It tells us how much energy westerners use on entertainment versus the energy poverty in some countries.”

Though energy consumption by computers is growing - and the rate of growth is increasing - Newcombe argues that what matters most is the type of usage.

If your internet use is in place of more energy-intensive activities, such as driving your car to the shops, that’s good. But if it is adding activities and energy consumption that would not otherwise happen, that may pose problems.

Newcombe cites Second Life and Twitter, a rapidly growing website whose 3m users post millions of messages a month. Last week Stephen Fry, the TV presenter, was posting “tweets” from New Zealand, imparting such vital information as “Arrived in Queenstown. Hurrah. Full of bungy jumping and ‘activewear’ shops”, and “Honestly. NZ weather makes UK look stable and clement”.

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About Me

I'm a patent lawyer located in central New Jersey. I have a J.D. from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. from Stanford University, where I studied graphite intercalation compounds at the Center for Materials Research. I worked at Exxon Corporate Research in areas ranging from engine deposits through coal and petroleum to fullerenes. An article that I wrote in The Trademark Reporter, 1994, 84, 379-407 on color trademarks was cited by Supreme Court in Qualitex v. Jacobson, 514 US 159 (1995) and the methodology was adopted
in the Capri case in N.D. Ill. An article that I wrote on DNA profiling was cited by the Colorado Supreme Court (Shreck case) and a Florida appellate court (Brim case). I was interviewed by NHK-TV about the Jan-Hendrik Schon affair. I am developing ipABC, an entity that combines rigorous IP analytics with study of business models, to optimize utilization of intellectual property. I can be reached at C8AsF5 at yahoo.com.